information operations – Page 11

Facebook, Twitter aim to slow spread of New York Post article amid disinformation concerns

Posted on October 14, 2020 by Jeff Stone

Social media companies are moving to limit the spread of an article that fits the description of the kind of political dirt that disinformation specialists have predicted would surface in the weeks before Election Day. An Oct. 14 New York Post story which purportedly shows evidence that Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden had engaged in some kind of political corruption during his time as vice president was immediately criticized by a range of academics and security practitioners who, for months, have advised the media to be cautious with any salacious materials that allegedly had been leaked prior to Nov. 3. The article from the right-leaning Post reports that Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, had sought to introduce his father to a Ukrainian businessman, citing emails that were allegedly left at a Delaware computer repair shop and provided to an attorney for Rudy Giuliani, a member of President Donald Trump’s legal team. Facebook said […]

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Twitter to limit politicians’ premature claims of victory, remove calls for violence

Posted on October 9, 2020 by Sean Lyngaas

With less than a month until Election Day in the U.S., Twitter said it would limit politicians’ ability to claim premature electoral victories, and remove calls for violence or interference in election results. Tweets claiming false victories will be flagged and users will be directed to credible information about the election, the company announced Friday. Any tweet intended to incite electoral interference, whether in the presidential or congressional races, will be removed. The policy change comes amid a contentious election in which President Donald Trump has repeatedly questioned the integrity of the vote and made unfounded claims about fraud. Twitter has been labeling Trump’s tweets about mail-in voting and directing users to factual information, but critics have called on the platform to do more. In the unrest following the killing of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man, in May, Trump tweeted, “when the looting starts, the shooting starts,” a message […]

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Takedown of 92 Iran-owned domains includes 4 used for disinformation in US, feds say

Posted on October 8, 2020 by Joe Warminsky

The U.S. government says it seized 92 internet domains used “to spread pro-Iranian disinformation around the globe,” including four that directly targeted U.S. audiences. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps operated the domains in violation of U.S. sanctions, according to a Justice Department announcement Wednesday. The department said the operation was based on intelligence provide by Google, and was a collaborative effort between the FBI and Google, Facebook and Twitter. The other 88 domains “targeted audiences in Western Europe, the Middle East, and South East Asia and masqueraded as genuine news outlets,” the department said. The feds claimed jurisdiction over all 92 domains because the government of Iran and the IRGC ran them through “website and domain services in the United States without a license from OFAC,” the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control. The announcement is the latest in a steady stream of news about attempts by U.S. agencies or Silicon Valley giants to monitor […]

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Twitter says FBI tip prompted takedown of 130 fake accounts during debate

Posted on October 1, 2020 by Joe Warminsky

Intelligence from the FBI prompted Twitter to take down roughly 130 accounts that “appeared to originate in Iran,” and were trying to generate conflict during the presidential debate Tuesday, the social media company reported. In its announcement Wednesday, Twitter did not offer more details about the origin of the accounts or the extent of the FBI’s tip, but said it would publish the results of its full investigation later. The takedowns are the latest in a series of announcements from U.S. social media giants about their efforts to block foreign information operations and other inauthentic behavior ahead of the 2020 elections. Russia, China and Iran are considered to be the primary sources of such activity, each with its own distinct set of interests. Federal officials have said Iran generally seeks to increase divisions in the U.S. electorate. An operation that spread racist disinformation about coronavirus vaccine tests during the summer resembled the behavior of an Iran-linked group that security researchers called Endless Mayfly. Twitter’s security […]

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Microsoft looks to expose espionage groups taking aim at NGOs, US politics

Posted on September 29, 2020 by Sean Lyngaas

Foreign espionage groups, including those bent on undermining the U.S. political process, have targeted non-government organizations and think tanks more than any other sector in a bid to gather intelligence, according to new data from Microsoft. Of the thousands of notifications Microsoft made to customers about state-linked hacking activity from mid-2019 to mid-2020, NGOs accounted for 32% of those alerts, the company said in a report released Tuesday. And over 90% of those notifications have been outside of critical infrastructure sectors. The focus on targets outside Washington suggests hacking groups could be in search of softer targets during an election season when Democratic and Republican campaigns have enlisted more people and technology to protect their networks. Those changes came after suspected Russian military hackers breached the Democratic National Committee in 2016 and leaked emails aimed at damaging Hillary Clinton’s campaign. “At the national level and the leading campaigns, there’s a much higher degree of vigilance,” Microsoft’s Tom Burt told CyberScoop, comparing the state of […]

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With an eye on election interference, Facebook scrubs networks of phony Russian accounts

Posted on September 24, 2020 by Sean Lyngaas

Facebook on Thursday removed over 200 phony accounts and dozens of pages that originated in Russia and pumped out information on sensitive geopolitical issues targeting people from Turkey to the U.S. Facebook said it traced the fraudulent activity to either people connected with Russian military intelligence services or the Internet Research Agency, a notorious Russia-based troll farm. It’s the latest in a series of actions that Facebook has taken against suspected foreign influence operations heading into the U.S. presidential election. “While we have not seen the networks we removed today…directly target the US 2020 election, they are linked to actors associated with election interference in the US in the past, including those involved in ‘DC leaks’ in 2016,” Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook’s head of security policy, said in a blog post. As with another suspected Russia-based influence operation that Facebook uncovered this month, the latest activity saw operatives pose as journalists or writers in an […]

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FBI, CISA: Foreign actors likely to spread disinformation on election results

Posted on September 22, 2020 by Sean Lyngaas

U.S. national security agencies said on Tuesday that foreign actors and cybercriminals could seize on delays in the reporting of election results to spread disinformation aimed at undermining confidence in the vote. Those adversaries could peddle false reports of “voter suppression, cyberattacks targeting election infrastructure, voter or ballot fraud, and other problems intended to convince the public of the elections’ illegitimacy,” the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said in a public advisory. Crooks or spies could set up websites or social media accounts to spread the false information, the agencies added. “The public should also be aware that if foreign actors or cyber criminals were able to successfully change an election-related website, the underlying data and internal systems would remain uncompromised,” the FBI and CISA statement said. The agencies urged voters to “rely on state and local government election officials” for official election results. With […]

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Twitter bolsters security for political accounts as election looms

Posted on September 18, 2020 by Sean Lyngaas

Just weeks away from the U.S. presidential election, Twitter says it is taking extra steps to secure high-profile accounts, such as political campaigns and major news outlets, whose compromise could impact voter perceptions. Twitter began rolling out the new security features, such as strong password requirements, on Thursday to the election-related accounts, including secretaries of state overseeing the vote and federal agencies and lawmakers. Accounts will be “strongly encouraged” to use two-factor authentication to prevent hacking, the social media platform said. In the weeks ahead, Twitter said it would implement “more sophisticated detections and alerts” to keep hackers from breaking into accounts. The eleventh-hour move to heighten account security reflects what Twitter executives described as the “unique sensitivities of the election period.” Four years ago, Russian bots and trolls spread disinformation on Twitter in a bid to damage Hillary Clinton’s campaign and boost Donald Trump. This year, U.S. intelligence agencies […]

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NSA director ranks influence operations as a top concern

Posted on September 16, 2020 by Shannon Vavra

Foreign influence operations are “the next great disruptor” in the U.S. intelligence community, the director of the National Security Agency said Wednesday. Gen. Paul Nakasone, who also serves as the head of Cyber Command, the Pentagon’s offensive cyber outfit, said he thinks influence efforts have the potential to shape the U.S. intelligence community’s operational environment for years to come. Planting misinformation and spreading disinformation are attractive ways for American adversaries to spread confusion in the U.S., in part because they can be inexpensive and they allow the opportunity to spread discord while operating below the level of armed conflict, Nakasone said. Disinformation specialists have said weaponized misinformation and baseless conspiracy theories already are having an effect on American life, in part because so many social media users spread sensational falsehoods, thinking they’re acting in good faith. “We’ve seen it now in our democratic processes,” Nakasone said during remarks at the virtual Intelligence and National Security […]

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